Art Chowder March | April 2018, Issue 14 | Page 27

01
A
s you arrive at the museum Pavilion
entry area, you will encounter Ambiente432:
Interactive Sound Sculpture by Seattle-based
sound sculptor Trimpkin.
This site-responsive installation explores the
sound/space continuum demonstrating how
an architectural environment can coexist and
harmonize with a kinetic sound sculpture.
Visitors will be immersed in a spatial and aural
world where their movement, throughout the
gallery, will affect the sound composition,
and thereby, their immediate experience.
Comprised of 12 motion-responsive resonator
horns suspended from the ceiling and
organized in strategic configurations, the
installation is tuned specially to 432Hz. This
vibrational frequency, and reoccurring number,
has been shown to exist in the tuning of
ancient Tibetan singing bowls and Stradivarius
instruments, as well as in the compositions
of Mozart and Verdi. Additionally, physicists
have calculated the Earth’s rhythms at a
cycle close to the fundamental frequency of
432Hz. Trimpin, who goes only by his last
name, was born in Germany in 1951, near
the Black Forest. He spent several years
living and studying in Berlin, working as a
set designer and collaborating with artists
from both Germany and the United States. He
has worked and lived in Seattle since 1979.
Trimpin received a MacArthur Genius Grant
and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Fellowship for his investigations of acoustic
music in spatial relationship, both in 1997. He
holds an Honorary Doctorate in Musical Arts
from California Institute of the Arts, which he
was awarded in 2010. From the WSU Museum
Exhibition Schedule.
Debby Stinson, marketing and public relations
manager, said, “I am most looking forward to
Ambiente432 by Trimpin, thanks to the three-
dimensional experience of being immersed
in sound while surrounded by art. I have
several Tibetan singing bowls at home and
have always been awed by the peace this
particular frequency brings. Envisioning being
surrounded and embraced in an interactive
sound sculpture is intriguing. I imagine
wandering the Pavilion gallery, surrounded by
new sounds with each viewing.”
March | April 2018
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